New Northcliffe hyperlocal sites will combine social networking and news
Is hyperlocal the future of news? Seamus McCauley revealed to me yesterday that the company behind the Mail Online and This Is London is developing a new generation of local news sites that will combine citizen journalism, blogging and Facebook-style networking.
Make the news and make friends with hyperlocal sites
McCauley, a strategic analyst at Associated Northcliffe Digital, said during his visit to City University that hyperlocal news is Northcliffe’s “hope for the answer” to the current media crisis. I broke the story in full on Journalism.co.uk, but I am now making the case for Northcliffe to support a hyperlocal website for my own hometown.
Berkhamsted perfectly fits McCauley’s brief, with a population of 16,000 but limited coverage from a local newspaper that also stretches across Hemel Hempstead, Tring, Kings Langley and the surrounding villages. Inspired by the success of Ed Walker’s Preston blog and Robin Hamman’s St. Albans blog, as well as my work on hyperlocal project the Hackney Post, I am hoping to persuade Northcliffe to add Berkhamsted to their list of 30 hyperlocal trial towns this summer.
The best hyperlocal journalism uses reporters’ tools and tricks to build on to the local knowledge that already exists in every town or city. There was a story in The Times last week about Susan Galbreath, an unemployed 40-year-old who secured a scoop that Fleet Street’s finest would have been proud of – and solved a murder in America’s deep south. Galbreath had no journalism knowledge or experience, but relied on the guidance of British reporter Tom Mangold and a wealth of local knowledge that “percolated up from the street”.
“The local Mayfield newspaper displayed almost zero interest; the regional paper didn’t want to know either. Local TV did its headline bites and moved on. Investigative journalists live in big cities and cover big cases. Mayfield is a very small town – a black girl raped and strangled, not the first, won’t be the last, no celebs involved, hey ho.”
The truth is that no matter how many flip cameras, BlackBerries, N95, iPhones, dictaphones or microphones we cram into our pockets, even the hottest hack would have struggled to scoop Galbreath without an intimate knowledge of the people, places and peculiarities of her hometown. Similiarly, Galbreath would have had difficulty structuring her investigation without Mangold’s investigative expertise. But could combining the two help the press claw its way out of peril?
If you have experience of, or opinions on, hyperlocal reporting, please leave a comment and share them with me.
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I really like the idea, Only the other day a “twitter” warned of bad traffic in an area of Berko so I avoided the area. Really need to get a “cool” phone so I can good updates although I could always turn on notifications for #berkhamstednews
Looks like an interesting development from Northcliffe, if they can get it right then they’ll be onto a winner but they’ve got to make sure their platform is flexible. We don’t know what new sites and tools are coming in the future, so if they adopt a rigid structure for these sites it won’t work.
They also need to remember that it won’t be a case of ‘build it and they will come’. People are sceptical, they need pushing. Northcliffe should be out in schools/colleges, in media studies lessons, inspiring kids to take up these new sites.
@James Simmonds I really need to get myself a “cool” phone as well, the amount of good content I walk past during my walk to work. If I had a “cool” phone I could snap it, or video it, a couple of pars and it’d be a new post.